I think you are ready for this jelly

I Just saw Prometheus

Just out of the 00.01 showing of Ridley Scott’s latest sci-fi offering in the BFI IMAX. And may I just say wow. That is a huge screen. It lurches one’s stomach rather like the feeling you get when you stare up a large tower or grounded sailing ship from the very bottom and feel as though it may just slowly fall on you. Its sheer height actually makes you a little emotional for some reason – I found myself strangely moved by the trailer for the Dark Knight Rises which I’d already seen and been pretty indifferent to.

But I must confess to something first: The first Alien film I ever saw was 2004’s Alien VS. Predator. This didn’t stop me from becoming the avid Alien fan that I am or appreciating the subtleties and horror of first two films or from developing that special place in my heart for the much maligned Alien Cubed. It acted as a doorway into a wider, more satisfying universe and thusly, I have to say I’m glad I saw it. Every Alien fan should.

Seminal

I wish Ridley Scott had. Because then he might not have accidentally remade it.

Ok that might be a bit harsh but seriously Prometheus is full of “haven’t we already done this?” moments and leaves the audience with so many unanswered questions that one wonders why there was any merit at all in making this film only tangentially refer to its progenitor. Why Lindelof and Scott thought there was anything so new and original in this story that it required its own spin-off is beyond the reasonable mind.

Let’s get the AVP similarities out of the way. The plot similarities, both based on nut-case Eric Von Daniken’s “God is an Astronaut” theory, are excusable (AVP isn’t exactly the apex of its genre here) but the way in which it’s introduced – a lecture delivered to a group of hard-case experts, in a hanger of their vessel which is heading toward the point of interest – is identical. In both cases it’s absurd that these professionals would hop on a ship heading toward uninhabitable landscapes with no foreknowledge of what they were there for but in Prometheus we’re told they’ve been in Cryo for 2 years and they only get briefed when they reach their destination?

Oh and the reason they’ve spent a trillion dollars and relinquished two years of their lives? Some paintings…you prolly saw it in the trailer. There is literally no better reason given for their expedition . At least in AVP there was a fricking pyramid heating up in the Arctic to justify their adventure. Also, in AVP they had a heat-signature to locate their future tomb – in Prometheus the crew flies their star-bug down to the planet and just happens upon some Nazca lines and Alien-God jackpot about a minute after arriving. Pretty lucky. Other comparisons are slim but no less irritating including the “No guns; this is a sciencey trip?” “Whatever you say, lady” exchange between strong female expert and gruff worker character and having two of our underdeveloped fodder characters getting lost in the maze-like alien tomb. Oh and dying member of the Weyland family who bankrolls the venture, inadvisably tagging along only to be killed off by a gargantuan extraterrestrial.

But let’s get onto the real meat. Music sets the tone. Alien is famous for its restrained use of any orchestral score only appearing intermittently during transitions or as the creature attacks. The infamous tagline “In Space no one can hear you scream” accurately evokes the bed-shitting silence at the end of the film when Ripley is left alone with the Phallic nightmare. Conversely, Prometheus is underscored with a grandiose and uplifting motif akin to the Aaron Copland American sound which is more at home in the Star Trek series than a grotesque space-horror. The score tends to displace the mood, and moments which in the trailer seemed ungodlily creepy and horrifying can blip past without evoking a simple jolt or shudder.

But perhaps you’re normal and don’t even notice the music unless it’s terrible. The dialogue is pretty worn. None of the characters seem to ask any reasonable questions and consequently, the audience isn’t given any satisfying answers. Moments which should be great literally fade before you as there is never much fuss made out of anything that happens. **SPOILERS** They discover the first sign of alien life, they discover it looks just like us, they discover that it shares our DNA, they discover that they made us, Naoomi Rapace gets impregnated and removes a giant horrific squid from her guts and NOBODY SEEMS TO CARE. Not even the director. And then, how are we to?

There’s far too much cod theology and many many empty exchanges which tend to drag the story around its ankles.

The whole story, thematically, is about parentage, and it’s about as subtle as a chestburster. Dr. Lizzy can’t have babies, Holloway, Vickers and David clearly all have daddy issues and they occasionally “reveal” these insights in choice moments that I presume were intended to be plot twists. **SPOILERS** Theron’s dramatic turn around to Wayland toward the end with the immortal “Father!” was particularly loll-ful. **END**

What was good? Well, what was good was great! I loved the Engineers. Ever since I laid eyes on that dead Space Jockey in Alien they had transfixed me so getting to see them fleshed out and move in all their lumbering glory was a treat. There was something very LOST about their introduction. The Black goo, the loin-cloth…probably the loin-cloth. But they were gorgeous; their statuesque form, marble skin, Roman noses and their loin-cloths evoked classic gods but somehow managed to gel seamlessly with the Alien universe. Their motives, however, do not sit so well.

We are told they have been to Earth previously and instructed primitive people to find them, “inviting” them to this nearby stellar constellation. We learn that they create biological weapons. Devastating, resilient, biological weapons of mass-destruction. We learnt that these weapons turned on them, hence there being no Engineers left. We learn that they created us. We learn (through just about the weirdest last minute piece of exposition I’ve yet seen) from the Cap’n that the planet isn’t their home but a place to store their super-dangerous weapons. We learn that their ship was bound for Earth, full of weapons, presumably to destroy it.

So, to recap…They make weapons, they make man; the most dangerous weapon. They decide to destroy man. They teach primitive species the directions not to their home planet but their weapon stash? A weapon stash they were going to fly to and dump on Earth eventually anyway? I…whut?

Then there’s Wayland who finances the whole trip based on cave maps and secrets himself on-board, with a vague plan of achieving eternal life granted to him by creatures he doesn’t yet know to exist? And he makes David infect Holloway…because…? and tries to sedate Dr.Lizzy why? and they all seem to forget about it immediately because…the…plot…and…The pace is simply to choppy and fast to accommodate any answers to these questions.

David, however, is a joy to watch. Fassbender once again steals the show with his curious, captivating, open face and dubious, self-righteous malice. With the leads being so dissmissable/dislikeable you almost cheer when he tries to do them in. Rapace fails to ignite any sympathy – hackneyed faith in the face of insurmountable evidence plot drew a yawn or two. Vickers was far more interesting a character and the moment she stepped up and refused to let the infected Holloway on-board I saw flickers of Ripley there and thought Scott had out-clevered us again; making us think Rapace was the strong woman who survives when in-fact it’s the by-the-book Vickers. But no-dice. She gets squashed. I really though Shaw deserved to bite it, like all mad scientists should, when their follies cause the deaths of everyone they know and love. It’s uptight “bitches” like Ripley who should get to survive. But no, Shaw has her faith rewarded. Humbug.

The HORROR!

So, all in all, I enjoyed it, of course I did. The first half is fantastic, raising question after question and genuinely creates an interesting mood. But it just kinda falls apart. I think the disappointment you’ll feel with this film will be measured by how high your expectations are. And mine were unfortunately pretty high. And I don’t think Ridley Scott’s promotional campaign helped that much. The ads promised creepy, shock, grotesque alien body-horror, eerie atmosphere, the unknown and deliberately harked back to the original Alien trailers so it is completely fair to compare them and to say that yes, it did disappoint – yes it failed to satisfy not just my expectations but also the expectations it itself raised.

For me the final insult is it’s having nothing to do at all with the ship found in Alien which would have given the whole affair a kind of reason for existing.

34 thoughts on “I Just saw Prometheus”

You sir, are an excellent writer!! Saw it at media sneak peek in USA yesterday and left theater liking it but actually confused about what story I was just told/shown. After sleeping on it, i find myself in exactly the same scenario as your review. I will see it again on public release next week but for now I’m more than a little upset with Lindelof

Good review! I haven’t seen it yet since I’m in the US, but I might as well have considering I’ve read the plot of wiki and spent way to much time on the Prometheus website and forums. So yes ,my expectations were super high and I was dissappointed when lindelhof/spaiths and RS were saying the script and writing were going to be so good when the reviews said otherwise. I was really hoping for the next great sci-fi film like minority report, etc since the production design seemed so promising. I would have to say that the head in the ampule chamber could have been better designed. I like spoilers but in this case I think they might have tarnished my desire to see it as I feel I will be dissappointed. From what I’ve seen of the space jockey it could come back to bite RS. Maybe it would have been better to leave them in their suits to avoid people associating them with a certain race.

I do agree though that the ancient astronauts premise is perfectly valid in works of fiction but maybe a man like weyland can send billion dollar ships into the abyss for their own self-edification?

Wow thanks for taking the time to list this films many inconsistencies. What a massive disappointment. over cgi’d, cared for absolutely no one, shit beasts (squids!!!!) and the final reveal was the biggest insult of all. That is by far the shittest looking alien of the bunch. To think they had Gigers imagination and back catalogue of tremendously disturbing designs and characters at their disposal and they came up with this sad sack of a movie is just too depressing to think about. I think i’ll just forget it was ever made.

Yep. You’ve said it all. I think maybe RS didn’t give himself enough time to make this movie, or was too concerned with the scenery and forgot about the characters, the emotional development and involvement. He should have spent about another year ironing it out perhaps. It felt rushed and crammed. The emotions of the characters didn’t have time to play out to make them realistic and believable enough.

Things happened – like Rapace fighting to get out of being frozen, beating the hell out of two people to get to the med-pod and cut the alien out of her and apparently being forgotten by the crew members she’d just aced. Nobody tried to stop her. They just ‘forgot’.

Damn. It should have been such a good movie and RS and Linedelof kind of failed, although I’m sure they don’t think so. It is so obviously and Alien movie, and a prequel, and it lends itself even to the AVP series – they don’t feel out of place or odd because of this movie at all – so why did they try to make it, superficially, seem to be something it is not. They might as well have made it more like Alien … because it really is. The parallels are unmistakeable.

Well, I enjoyed it a lot, but I came out of the cinema feeling cheated and niggled on some levels. Some questions were sort of answered, some weren’t, and some new questions were raised, but it just didn’t hit home. Alien is a masterpiece 10 out of 10. Prometheus, in terms of pacing and story just isn’t. It’s a 7 out of 10 at best. For scenery and cinematography, yes, 10 out of 10, but a good movie needs to be more than that to be REALLY GOOD. A masterpiece.

I wonder if RS and Lindelof will kick themselves later. I hope so. And, if they make a sequel, I hope they improve on it a lot, and approach it more sensibly and honestly.

I almost hope they turn around and say, ‘OK, We’re going to withdraw this and tidy it up and then release it again when it’s right’. If only.

I appreciate the review. You acknowledged what you liked, explained what you didn’t, and were honest enough to tell what your first experience with the Alien series was (not many would admit that). Being in the states, we have another week to wait but at least I will go into the movie knowing what to expect (lower expectations mean more of a chance to enjoy it).
It’s funny – many, if not most of the reviews I’ve read say how good Prometheus looked but the plot and characters were terrible. That got me thinking about a movie my wife and I watched again a couple of nights ago: Bedknobs and Broomstick, a Disney films made in 1971. Granted, we’re older (she’s 49 and I’m 54), but we LOVE that movie! If you haven’t see it, the special effects are primitive (they’re cartoons, actually – like Mary Poppins), but the story and the cast were marvelous! In fact, now that I’ve mentioned Mary Poppins, that’s another must see if you haven’t.
The point being special effects and set design mean nothing without a decent story and cast of characters who are believable and likeable. Case in point using movies that I’ve seen: the last two Transformers movies, both Fantastic Four movies, and Green Lantern (but to a lesser degree).
Anyway, thanks again to your review – much appreciated!
PS – ignore the haters that reply to you without any desire to debate your views.

To be honest, I didn’t mind AVP at all. If they had a few more ‘serious’ actors in it it might have actually have become a lot more respected than it has. The plot, on paper, would have been very satisfying. ‘Spoiling’ Prometheus for myself ( I haven’t seen it yet, but read its plot and ‘fake’ script on line) it seems to share a lot of the original alien script (lost civilization, ‘jars’, pyramids and hieroglyphics) and much more of In The Mountains of Madness than Alien ever did (ancient Aliens’ own squid creature designs wipe them out).

Perhaps Sir Ridley has now fallen into the George Lucas mold of having too many ‘yes-men’ surround him. Here is apparently an undercooked screenplay and effort that could have done with a bit more of a challenge. A pity the 1979 super-team of O’Branon and Giger couldn’t assemble.

Great review. I never would have thought to compare AVP with Promethius!

I think you have a problem in that you have a basic need to be spoon-fed, when this movie actually left many questions unanswered, which is no bad thing in itself. Can you tell me why the creature at the beginning committed suicide? No. There are some clues, but you don’t know the answer. Was this intentional? You don’t know. Is this creature an Engineer or a drone sent out to do the work of a superior race? You don’t know. Why did ‘they’ turn on us? You don’t actually know. What happened in the 30,000 years since they left their calling cards on Earth? You don’t know. What are the motivations of an advanced alien race? You don’t know.

Try to exercise your imagination a little, and you might find this story has legs.

I fundamentally disagree here.My problem is not with mystery, it’s with inconsistency, unoriginality and plot holes. There’s ambiguity and then there’s plot holes. The creature creating human life on earth at the beginning is ambiguous; we don’t know why or for whom he is doing this. Plot holes are like why Shaw never mentions that she’s had this squid baby to anyone or how they find the temple so easily.

You don’t know how many temple installations were on that planet. There could have been myriads for all you or I know. Or, for pacing reasons, there’s a thousand scenarios – irrelevant to the story – that could involve a trillion dollar ship heading in the right direction. But I don’t need that spelling out for me for the story to work, whereas you apparently do. A lot was going on after Shaw’s operation. Apart from the obvious fact that she was in a state of deep mistrust about the rest of the crew, I don’t think the film is any worse for her not yapping on about that particular episode.

The film is much worse for it. The operation scene is the only scene that worked in the whole film. Unfortunately the tension in it was predicated on an absurd contrivance to increase risk: that the machine was only programmed for male anatomy. So we’re meant to believe that:

1) the technological sophistication exists to build such a machine, but female anatomy and female-specific surgical procedures are too complex.

2) The machine is in Vickers’ lifeboat suite. Vickers is female. So apparently she’s outfitted her lifeboat with a medlab that won’t be able to heal her unless she has a malady that a man could have. So she’s an idiot.

What’s more, Shaw stumbles out of the operation and the following happens:

1) She can more or less walk despite having severed abdominal muscle tissue.

2) No one seems to care about the two crew members she assaulted to get to the medlab.

3) She stumbles into Weyland’s room and no one seems terribly bothered or feels the need to comment on the fact that she’s half naked and covered in blood and sweat.

4) She’s apparently also so unbothered about it that she sits down and calmly listens to Weyland’s ridiculously portentous dialogue.

5) Pearce’s old-man makeup was atrocious. Instead of getting an actual old man they had to use Pearce because he was in the viral marketing as a young Weyland. Thus the films quality is degraded by the need to *stay consistent with the marketing*. This speaks volumes.

If Shaw was so mistrustful as you say, wouldn’t she have avoided people altogether and found a quite place to recover instead of barging into Weyland’s room?

This also brings up a further point:

Are we actually supposed to believe that there’s a whole huge room in the ship for Weyland that somehow Vickers and Janek just simply don’t know about? We see the relative size of the ship in exterior as it approaches LV-223. It’s not that big. Not nearly as cavernous and vast as the Nostromo. But somehow Weyland has a lovely spacious secret suite all to himself.

And yeah, maybe they do find the installation off-screen. it’s a leap, but let’s assume it. Then why park the Prometheus so far away from the location? Surely they could have saved a bit of commuting time for themselves. But no, we have to see the helicopter shots of the vehicles going toward the installation and know that there’s distance there so that there’s some tension in the storm scene.

There isn’t a scene in that movie that isn’t riddled with illogic and transparent contrivances. It’s atrocious screenwriting.

Josh, you are way too prone to exaggeration, my friend. How many scenes are in that movie? Every one is riddled with illogic and transparent contrivances? Give me a break. That’s troll speak.

The medical unit was not a male-only device as you say. It was, however, not calibrated to perform Caesarian sections (as it said) automatically. Duh. Like they would be expecting to do that on a mission with an up-time of possibly a few weeks. Whether or not you believe technology will be perfect in future, what you are doing is not-picking at a technical detail. That’s not a plot hole.

David et al were massively preoccupied with resuscitating Weyland. Trivial matters like the fate of the lab techs are simply not important in a 2 hour movie that packs in a lot of detail. You are supposed to fill in the gaps yourself… Unless your brain stops working when you are munching popcorn.

Shaw was in a lot of discomfort after she was stitched up. I am prepared to accept that the machine could potentially perform a chemical micro-muscle fibre augmentation that would at least allow her to stagger. Can you? Or do you not understand what sci-fi is all about?

Shaw was shocked to see Weyland. Look that word up in a dictionary if you’re having trouble.

Weyland’s make up was ok. It didnt depict an old man. It depicted an *extremely* old man (older than any man you know) propped up by technology.

Weyland’s suite wasn’t massive. I’m sure it appears on the schematics. People do that kind of stuff in 3D design these days, you know.

Come on, mate. I’m all for getting to the bottom of what this film is about. But you are shooting from the hip because that’s what you like to do.

Fair point. I can buy that it wasn’t programmed for Caesareans. As I said, that scene actually worked and successfully created tension and suspense. It was the only time I got emotionally invested in the movie. Fwiw, I’m not claiming it’s a plot hole, just a contrivance. There is a difference. An unnecessary contrivance in any event. It could have been programmed for Caesareans and it wouldn’t diluted the tension of the scene. So it was a throwaway exchange. Why not cut it? In the time it took for the computer to say that it didn’t do caesareans, you could have had it say later it was performing a chemical micro-muscle fibre augmentation. This would have *added* suspense because it took time AND supplied plausibilty to her post-op actions.

I’m fine with filling in certain gaps myself especially if they’re only occasional. The perfectly tight script is rare even in classic films and masterpieces. Good filmmakers know how to hide the flaws. Obviously I’m watching a sci-fi movie, I’m prepared to suspend disbelief about many things. But making viewers constantly invent rationales for things is bad writing and takes audiences out of the film. And yes, it really is nearly every scene. If you have gaps in your script, you want to hide them as much as possible so that people aren’t taken out of the film every five minutes trying to fill them in. Nolan is really great at this. So much in Dark Knight makes no sense, but you don’t notice because so many other great things are going on. Prometheus is totally inept at this.

The fate of the lab techs isn’t important. What’s odd is that after getting knocked down, they just disappear. They don’t alert anyone to her escape and no one seems to care that she’s escaped. So apparently whatever they were doing to her wasn’t terribly important anyway. So why have them there at all? Why not just have her stagger off the table and into the medlab whilst cross-cutting to the thing squirming in her belly to create the suspense? Again, more baggy writing. Disposable characters, actions and scenes = bad writing = bad filmmaking (and how that thing went from a human abdomen sized creature to an Engineer devouring giant without feeding on anything to add to its mass is…well, another head scratcher that takes you out of the film)

The point isn’t that Weyland’s suite was massive. The point is that it was there. And apparently Vickers and Janek had no knowledge of it and were just as surprised as Shaw to see him there. Is this really believable? Why not just throw in something early about “classified cargo in Cargo Bay X” to set it up for later? They certainly didn’t have any problem with loads of clunky expository dialogue in the first act of the film. Again, poor writing. Surprises and twists are more effective when they’re set up, not when they just appear out of nowhere.

You’re right that these are small points, but this is only a small fraction of the problems with this film. The sad thing is that there is no “getting to the bottom of what this film is about” because it isn’t about anything. It’s a very very poorly constructed hodge-podge of a lot of half-baked ideas and has nothing to interesting or insightful to say about the thematic questions it raises. And all of the thematic questions are undercut by the poor craftsmanship at the script-level because the incoherence keeps viewers at a distance. It is so so dismal that people will burn hours debating this or that nonsense about this movie believing, wrongly, that if you just think about it enough, and invent enough rationales to fill in all the holes, it will cohere. It won’t, because it’s fundamentally incoherent on plot, character and thematic levels.

It is so depressing, for those of us who love movies and sci-fi movies in particular, that these people blow $120 million on a film and can’t spend a couple hundred thousand to hire good script doctors on the front end. How they cynically put a poorly made-up Pearce in the film because he was part of the viral marketing campaign. And how they cynically don’t leave basic narrative questions answered to leave room for sequels *knowing* that there are audience members out there who will shrug and say “well, it raises a lot of questions and makes you think.” No, it doesn’t. Confusing people because you don’t think through your own script is not the same as making an audience think. It’s passing laziness off as profundity. It’s a sham.

He did keep saying that. But he also said the Space Jockey was the central premise when they started working on the script.

It’s really unclear what he meant by ‘something else altogether’. I mean, it’s in the same world as Alien, it’s before Alien chronologically, it carries over story elements (Weyland Corp, Space Jockey), etc.

People online keep saying stuff like “we all knew it wasn’t going to tie in to Alien so why are people so disappointed” which is so redundant. Even without it’s links to Alien the film is poorly constructed and badly scripted. AND fans can still decry the choice not to tie it in to Alien because it was the wrong choice to make. If it had at least attempted to make sense of the original Space Jockey it might have been worth it in a roundabout way.

Hi! Thank you for your review. I’ve seen “Prometheus” last Saturday and went out of the cinema enchanted by the visuals and totally messed up by scenario. But couldn’t figure out what is it exactly that confuses me. And then I found this. And everything is so clear now about the movie. It’s a bad candy in a beautiful package.

Not only did RS make a bad movie here but, just like George Lucas did with Episodes I – III, he actually managed to diminish his original masterpiece. By revealing that the space jockey is merely a space suit containing nothing but a rather buff bald guy, he robs us of the bizarre strangeness that made H.R. Giger’s earlier vision so horrifying.

And from a horror perspective, I don’t like the storyline idea of a human connection to the aliens to begin with. You can only be so scared by your relatives, no matter how pissy their demeanor is.

Ok I completely agree with your review. I love the original Alien and it was the first movie I remember seeing. I always loved the mythology of the Alien franchise and its obvious that it has been copied a lot especially by Star Craft and Halo (aka Xelnoga and Forerunners) about the Space Jockeys being God like Engineers that created or at least discovered the Alien and somewhat perfected them until the aliens got them. I just got done seeing PROMETHEUS and have to say that I hated it, but I’m willing to see what’s next and maybe there is still hope that the next movie can be great and everything that franchise needs it to be. Also I will state Prometheus is probably one of the best looking movies ever and that the acting was great. I also love the tributes to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Spot on review. Prometheus is just a rehash of AVP. Didn’t anyone at fox say, “Um, haven’t we made this movie already”. The basic structure is identicle. Personally I liked the film. Thought it was technically top notch. But the story has been done before. It’s kind of a cross between ‘AVP’ & ‘Mission to Mars’. Think about it…

Fantastic points. Here’s something that rather bugged me about the movie…

When I first heard that the film originally intended as a direct Alien prequel was being changed to a film just set in the same universe as Alien, I was excited: what a great opportunity to open up the storytelling landscape of this compelling canvas!

Having seen it, though, what I really think Prometheus should have been was, well, a direct Alien prequel.

The DNA of the script’s former life as a direct prequel is woven through this final form: a barren planet with a mysterious ship that crash lands. Creatures that implant themselves into humans, only to unleash a greater horror. Oh, our expensive expedition with top company brass disappears without a trace? Hmm, better send our nearest vessel to investigate, even if it is just a mining rig.

Getting to see the Engineers (so glad we finally have something to call them aside form “Space Jockeys”) was great, but setting the film on a slightly different planet with a slightly different planet with a slightly different bioweapon-alien-foe-thingie robbed the setting of any resonance it might have struck with the audience.

I feel like Prometheus suffers in general from just having bits and pieces tacked on to the original script to give it more “scope” when it really needed to be rewritten from the ground up if this is the direction Scott and Lindelof wanted to take it

[…] clever hysteria machine (which recently left me twice shy after getting a nasty bite from Ridley Scott) but not so this time. Frankly, the marketing for Christopher Nolan’s latest Bat-sequel has […]